06-24-2003, 04:27 PM
Hi,
They officially announced that a month or more ago.
Yep, and the news story in the link from Cybit was dated April 30th. So, definitely fish wrapper. :)
There was a new article in today's NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/24/business...dia/24PLAC.html that basically just says there are four bids in the works with a possible fifth showing interest. The fifth bid if it comes is coming from " the NBC unit of General Electric." The other four are summarized as:
"Although the size of the bids could not be determined, a person close to Vivendi said that Liberty Media, led by John C. Malone, had made a bid. So did two investor groups, one led by Edgar Bronfman Jr., the former chief executive of Seagram, and the other by the entrepreneur Marvin Davis.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer also submitted an offer, this person said, but only for the Universal film library, which may make it unlikely that M.G.M. will emerge as the winner."
Buzzard is a pretty small piece of a much bigger pie. Looks like Vivendi is only interested in selling the whole pie ("Vivendi would prefer to sell off Vivendi Universal Entertainment intact, though, because a piecemeal sale of assets could result in a high tax bill.").
So, even if Buzzard gets bought up by anyone anytime soon, the question then becomes "what will the new owner do?" The most obvious answers are:
Shut Buzzard down -- not likely since the company is a money maker.
Sell Buzzard off -- possible, especially if whoever buys up the Vivendi entertainment properties mostly wants the movie bits for vanity (not unlikely in the case of Bronfman).
Let it continue to run itself -- this comes in two flavors, with and without "undue" interference. If whoever buys the package has no experience with computer games, then letting Buzzard (and Sierra, which I think is part of the package) continue to run themselves makes sense. Anything more than routine management would probably be a bad idea. A good rule (which unfortunately is often ignored by some business men) is "if it works, don't f* with it."
But, things are still pretty much working at a level whose resolution will probably still not give us a clue as to the long term future of Buzzard. No real need to worry about it, *yet*.
--Pete
They officially announced that a month or more ago.
Yep, and the news story in the link from Cybit was dated April 30th. So, definitely fish wrapper. :)
There was a new article in today's NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/24/business...dia/24PLAC.html that basically just says there are four bids in the works with a possible fifth showing interest. The fifth bid if it comes is coming from " the NBC unit of General Electric." The other four are summarized as:
"Although the size of the bids could not be determined, a person close to Vivendi said that Liberty Media, led by John C. Malone, had made a bid. So did two investor groups, one led by Edgar Bronfman Jr., the former chief executive of Seagram, and the other by the entrepreneur Marvin Davis.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer also submitted an offer, this person said, but only for the Universal film library, which may make it unlikely that M.G.M. will emerge as the winner."
Buzzard is a pretty small piece of a much bigger pie. Looks like Vivendi is only interested in selling the whole pie ("Vivendi would prefer to sell off Vivendi Universal Entertainment intact, though, because a piecemeal sale of assets could result in a high tax bill.").
So, even if Buzzard gets bought up by anyone anytime soon, the question then becomes "what will the new owner do?" The most obvious answers are:
Shut Buzzard down -- not likely since the company is a money maker.
Sell Buzzard off -- possible, especially if whoever buys up the Vivendi entertainment properties mostly wants the movie bits for vanity (not unlikely in the case of Bronfman).
Let it continue to run itself -- this comes in two flavors, with and without "undue" interference. If whoever buys the package has no experience with computer games, then letting Buzzard (and Sierra, which I think is part of the package) continue to run themselves makes sense. Anything more than routine management would probably be a bad idea. A good rule (which unfortunately is often ignored by some business men) is "if it works, don't f* with it."
But, things are still pretty much working at a level whose resolution will probably still not give us a clue as to the long term future of Buzzard. No real need to worry about it, *yet*.
--Pete
How big was the aquarium in Noah's ark?